How to Cite a Website in MLA

Citing a website in MLA means building a Works Cited entry from six things: the author, the title of the page, the name of the website, the publisher when it differs from the site name, the publication date, and the URL. Your in-text citation then repeats the first of those elements — the author's last name, or the shortened page title if there is no author.

That entry — and the parenthetical citation that points back to it — is what this guide walks through element by element, with worked examples for the cases students actually meet: an ordinary page, a whole site, an unsigned page, and a page with no date.

The MLA Website Citation Format

MLA 9 builds every citation from the same ordered list of core elements. For a page on a website, the template looks like this:

Read it as a sequence of decisions rather than a form to fill: start with the author, work down the list, and stop when the source runs out of information. Missing elements are simply omitted — never replaced with a placeholder.

Webpage or Website: Which One Are You Citing?

This is the first decision, and it changes the whole entry. A webpage is a single page — an article, a guide, a report, a product description. A website is the whole thing, all of its pages treated as one work.

• Cite the webpage when your evidence comes from one specific page. This is the overwhelming majority of student citations.
• Cite the whole website only when you are describing the site generally, referring to its homepage, or quoting something that appears across many pages — a slogan, a mission statement, a statistic repeated site-wide.

MLA is explicit on this point: you do not create one entry for the website and then hang every page off it the way you would stories in an anthology. Readers can reach a page directly, so each page earns its own entry. Two pages from the same site therefore produce two separate Works Cited entries — but only one in-text citation each, keyed to whatever opens that entry.

Every Element, in Order

Author. The byline above the headline. Invert it — last name first — and if there is no byline, see citing a website with no author. A credited organization counts as the author, not as a missing author.

Title of the page. The headline or page title, in quotation marks, with the period placed inside the closing quotes. Italic is reserved for the site, not the page.

Name of the website. The italicized container that holds the page — the brand readers see at the top of the site, not the URL. If the page you are citing is a standalone publication hosted on a platform, the publication is the container instead; that distinction is covered in citing an online article.

Publisher. Include it only when it differs from the site name. If the site is published by the same organization whose name is already in the container position, repeating it wastes a line and MLA tells you to leave it out.

Publication date. Day-month-year, with the month abbreviated: 14 Feb. 2025. Use the date the page was published or last substantially updated — not the copyright year in the footer, unless that is genuinely all the site gives you.

Location. The URL, ending with a period. When a DOI exists, prefer the DOI — more on that in citing a database source.

When to Include the Publisher

The publisher element appears on the Works Cited page only when it tells your reader something the site name does not. In practice that means one of two situations:

The first entry carries a publisher because Ready and FEMA are different names. The second does not, because the site and its publisher are the same organization — adding it would just print the information twice. Look for the copyright line in the site footer: if it matches the site name, drop the publisher.

URLs: What to Include and What to Cut

MLA 9 wants a URL on web citations so your reader can find the source, with two practical conventions:

• Drop the protocol. Start at the domain — www.civicledger.org/stormwater-cities rather than https://www.civicledger.org/stormwater-cities.
• Keep the address readable. Extremely long tracking URLs can be shortened to the point where the page still resolves, but never trim away the part that identifies the page.
• Do not put a URL in your in-text citation. Parenthetical citations carry the author or short title, not an address.

If the site gives you a DOI instead of a URL, use the DOI in full, formatted as https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx.

Access Dates: When You Need One

An access date is the day you opened the page, written as Accessed 12 May 2026. It sits at the very end of the entry, after the URL. MLA treats it as optional, and it earns its place in two situations:

• The page has no publication date — the access date is then the only date in the entry.
• The page is likely to change or disappear — news feeds, dashboards, wikis, and social posts.

When a page does carry a clean publication date, you can leave the access date off. If you are unsure, including it is never wrong — it is simply optional, not a required element. The full treatment of a page with no date is in our guide to citing websites with no date.

Citing an Entire Website

When the site itself is the source, there is usually no page title and no individual author. Begin with the italicized site name:

Use the copyright or publication year shown in the footer if the site provides one; if it does not, go straight from the site name to the URL and close with an access date. In text, the site name alone identifies it: (Civic Ledger). Because a whole site is a long, self-contained work, its short form is italicized, while any page inside it takes quotation marks.

Website Citation Examples

Four realistic entries, one for each situation that comes up most often:

Page with an author:

Page with no author — the title moves to the front:

Page with no date — the date element is skipped, not filled in:

Government page, organization as publisher:

Notice that the fourth entry has no separate publisher: the site name is the organization, so listing both would repeat the same name.

In-Text Citations for Websites

Web pages almost never have page numbers, so your parenthetical carries one element only:

If you name the author in your sentence, the parentheses can hold only a locator — and for an unpaginated web page, that means nothing at all, so you leave them out entirely:

Do not number paragraphs yourself, do not count your word processor's print-preview pages, and do not paste a URL into the parentheses. For a long page where readers need help finding the passage, a section heading is acceptable inside the citation. The full rules live in our in-text citation guide.

Common Mistakes

• Putting the page title in italics and the site name in quotes — it is always the reverse: page in quotes, site in italics.
• Listing the publisher when it only repeats the site name.
• Writing n.d. or "no date" in place of a missing publication date — the element is simply omitted. See no-date citations.
• Citing the homepage because you cannot find the author of the page you actually used.
• Keeping https:// in front of every URL, and placing the title's period outside the closing quotation mark.
• Adding a paragraph number or a URL to the parenthetical citation.
• Reusing one website entry for three different pages of that site — each page gets its own entry.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I cite a website in MLA if there is no author or date?

Start with the page title in quotation marks, then the site name, then the URL, and close with an access date. The author and publication date elements are omitted rather than replaced. Each missing element is handled in its own guide: no author and no date.

Do I need an access date for every website citation?

No. MLA makes the access date optional. Include it when the page has no publication date or when its content is likely to change after you cite it; otherwise a clean publication date is enough.

How do I cite a website with no page numbers in text?

Use just the author's last name, or the shortened title when there is no author. Websites have no stable pagination, so no locator is added — and you should never count paragraphs or print-preview pages to invent one.

What is the difference between a website and a webpage in MLA?

A webpage is one page and is cited with a page title in quotation marks. A website is the whole site and is cited with the italicized site name and no page title. Cite the page whenever your evidence comes from a specific page, which is almost always.